Look at this photo. Do you see it ? How much posterior rotation (left rotation) is being driven through that left shoulder/torso rotation. That is nuts! We have a hard time believing that is not a compensation. We would be assessing for stability and mobility issues elsewhere. Heck, the elbow practically crosses the spine posteriorly ! Sheesh ! When you cannot put the movement where it should be, or control it (stabilize) where it should be controlled, sometimes you try to get it or put it elsewhere. We would love to see this lady run, we bet there is a host of clean gait problems down below. We would bet some cross over gait is present as well, after all, that left arm swing is largely predicated off of the right leg swing. Arm swing is far less independent than people think, we have written about that here on our blog numerous times. Just search “arm swing” over on our Tumblr blog.

Remember this, and if you need to go back to read about phasic and anti-phasic gaits head over and search our blog, but the amount of shoulder “girdle” (essentially thoracic rotation) is typically met by the same amount of pelvis rotation. These should be symmetrical. And, when they are not, we can drive it through various means, even as in this case, through more arm swing unilaterally. We wish we could see some axial photos from above to see how much pelvis rotation is noted here.